


Lessons Learned

by viceandvirtue



Series: The Secrets ANBU Keep [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Gen, Mentions of Suicide, Murder, Teaching, Training, again...ANBU, enough said, it’s ANBU what did you expect?, it’s a very thin line, learning, maybe mental instability?, what they do and do not teach you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-12 21:56:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12969216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceandvirtue/pseuds/viceandvirtue
Summary: What they do and do not teach you in ANBU isn’t something you just forget.





	Lessons Learned

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You Learn Not to Scream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/153920) by [uzumaki_rakku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/uzumaki_rakku/pseuds/uzumaki_rakku). 



There’s _a lot of things they teach you in ANBU._

How not to scream, how to kill, how to hide the body, and how to hunt the people that killed your teammate if it comes down to that (and it usually did) - the other person behind the porcelain mask next to you. It doesn’t matter the animal.

(The animal rarely fit the person behind it at the end of the day when the masks came off.)

If you decide to die at your own hands they'll teach you how not to hide yourself away _too_ well so that your teammates (or someone, but most likely your teammates because there's probably no one else to come looking) can find you later. And they teach you how to make it _mostly_ clean and _somewhat_ painless - but death like that is never mostly clean nor somewhat painless and everybody knows it so there's never really a point.

The logic behind what they teach you is very simple, in the end.

Simple enough to become ingrained in your very being and simple enough that it's not a lesson that bears repeating after perhaps the second time they have to teach it to you, because _dang it, it didn't stick the first time._

_The things they teach you in ANBU never leave you._

It's like the tattoo they put on your shoulder if you happen to make the cut.

The tattoo can be covered up, can be hidden from view and can be ignored as if it doesn't exist, but it never really leaves. It remains part of the person on whose skin it's inked in blood red - like the blood they spill on the battlefield and if it happens to get covered by blood...well, where the blood ends and the tattoo begins is sometimes hard to distinguish, and it all bears the same meaning in the end.

They don't teach you about what pain lies in the sunlight. It's easier, less painful in the shadows, but you should have already known that if you're joining ANBU. You should be leaving the sunlight on purpose, most think. And that's what most do.

They don't teach you how to torture somebody because, really, if you're mad enough - in your silent, cold, uniform, but still oddly personal fury - you'll know how.

They don't teach you how to cope, really. Coping is something that's more personal than anger, and if you're in ANBU, the choice to live that lifestyle is probably how you're coping with whatever pain you experienced while outside the shadow's grip.

_There's no such thing as an ex-ANBU_.

Something deep down inside everyone who has ever been ANBU knows this. You may adopt other habits to adjust to life in the sunlight again but at home, you might as well have never taken the mask off. Unless you're a really good actor, you might be able to keep up the pretences at home, too. The lessons they do and don't teach you sit off to the side in your brain because you can't just push them to the back - those lessons are too strong to be dismissed so carelessly out of hand.

The shadows are still more comfortable to you, and you try to melt into them whenever you have the chance because there's a part of you that recognises the shadows as someplace so much safer, knows you'll be welcomed back with arms ready to bury you again in the faceless ranks of porcelain and bone white armour.

It's hard to fight temptation, and that's another thing they don't teach you in ANBU.

_At some point, ANBU and the things it does and does not teach you, become all you have left. There are secrets in ANBU that you keep to yourself, for yourself._

It's just the nature of the job.

 


End file.
